


Cardinal Directions

by grayglube



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: F/M, Pseudo-Incest, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 13:15:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6567829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grayglube/pseuds/grayglube
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s not natural. It’s a manufactured surprise. It feels like it should matter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cardinal Directions

**Author's Note:**

> the sex pollen is so slight I wouldn't even count it normally but hey, why not? also this was sort of a midnight rush job, ignore the lack of a better edit.

They’re both angry. In the absence of any one thing to put it towards they start eyeing each other like animals would if they were hurt and hungry and only one of them is going to able to walk away or eat. She feels it. Something intangible changing instead of being changed, it’s not natural. It’s a manufactured surprise. It feels like it should matter.

 

She shouldn’t be able to put her feelings back in a box as easily as she has.

 

Without the apprehension she’s had from the start about Jace (because she wanted him once) there’s just his attitude, his moods, his emotional slash and burn tactics.

 

He was too male once, all-together too much of what might be bad for her, too much of what might feel good.

 

There’s nothing to mitigate what’s left and the basic allowance of attraction being not allowed makes civility between them difficult, some days.

 

For him more than her.

 

She’s trying. Sometimes she sighs and shuts a door on things, goes to sleep it off, it’s easier than starting an argument they can’t finish or say what needs to be said to have it help.

 

Now, it’s not the same as treating him like a boy who was just a friend, it’s not the same as treating him like she does Simon. He’s more and less sensitive than that in unexpected ways. She has to make it a point to avoid the awkward. He starts knocking, she stops touching his shoulder, his hand, his hair. She starts wearing longer shorts to bed and zip ups over her sports bras when walking around before bed, he doesn’t take his shirt off when they all train together. His exits are abrupt some days, he’s uncomfortable and she tries to keep things normal.

 

When he tells her in a moment of frustration and too little sleep after a briefing: “Everything you’re doing feels so forced. Just knock it off, Clary.” He’d stalked off and she’d been left with her smile and good mood sloughed off from surprise.

 

She’s seen everyone around leave him be at some point, she’s learning when she should do the same. For a while she doesn’t start conversations, she wants things to be easier. He needs time, they don’t speak at all and she let’s it be.

 

There’s always the unavoidable; late nights of passing in the hallway, sleepy ambulation to or from the bathroom in her underwear and tank top, barefoot and braless, or him from the kitchen with his sweatpants slung too low. It’s hard not to look. She tries to imagine girls reacting over him, it makes her laugh silently enough to take the sting away. Her brother is hot, good for him.

 

They all go out for ‘fun’. It’s what they used to call easy hunting when they were a trio.

 

Izzy always smiles and bumps her hip against hers says grinning that they’re a crew now.

 

Simon perks up and adds they might be considered a pack or a mob with a few more members.

 

Jace says they’re a team and his grin is small but it’s nice because for once he’s not perpetually moody-broody.

 

The camaraderie lasts until a moment like the last time Izzy thought her top was spectacular and hands come around to grab her chest from behind, nothing too salacious just a gentle shove of her chest from someone else’s hands.

 

She’d been ready to laugh, but her eyes look over to Jace’s out of habit.

 

She’s always trying to find a reaction, new or seen before and file it away.

 

It used to be because she liked him now it’s because she wants to find the similarities between them, some emotional synchronization that comes from their shared parentage.

 

He’s gone so still she finds the similarity in the way she mimics him, it’s shock and an inherited inability to blink first.

 

Izzy is still laughing and Alec is eye-rolling like it’s a competition sport and they don’t notice what’s happening. Simon does,  that’s harder to accept than the awful sharp stab of sorry she feels. Simon kicks something at the other end of the table, a long line of spears clatters and everyone looks, he laughs, says something about how he hasn’t lost all his human capacity for making messes.

 

“I think it got worse,” Izzy mimes a cat paw and puckers her lips, meowing for a second. Izzy’s still got a hand high on her ribs.

 

“Isabelle can you get off my sister’s tits and focus please.”

 

Isabelle blows a raspberry and Alec laughs but Simon avoids her eyes and her own mouth drops open, Jace ignores it.

 

They go out and it’s supposed to be fun but when Jace moves she remembers him teaching her how to jab , stab, kill in the cemetery, hips pushing at hers and knees bumping into the back of hers, a touch too much contact to really be called training or teaching with a straight face.

 

She puts the thought in a box that she shuts the lid on and puts back on a shelf, one that’s buckling under the weight of all the others, boxes filled with time wasted on a life that was never quite real or never the full truth.

* * *

 

They visit the Fae court, it’s not the fun or easy hunting but it’s more serious than a social call for pizza and playstation rock band jams. Izzy does most of the talking, Alec and Jace huddle close like bored boys trying to look tough for lack of anything else to do. She stands around and gets stared at, female fae titter and touch her hair as they pass, male ones smile and tilt their heads before swaying dreamily away to whatever it is fae do during their down time. She can guess.

 

It’s beautiful.

 

She looks at things placed around on pillars and tables the way she’s always looked at things so she could sketch from memory later. There are unreal and unseen before flowers, cups filled with things that smell like sour-sweet candy or the best family birthday dinner, changing with each tendril of scent she catches.

 

It’s warm and nice and she notes with such suddenness she lets her face do something strange to express her disbelief at realizing she’s buzzing with clarity. She’s wet. There’s a steady throb all down her thighs and her breasts feel heavy and sensitive, achy.

 

There’s a big yellow flower tucked behind her ear, she hadn’t noticed but fae are still smiling at her, peeking in her direction.

 

Jace points, discrete and to the side. Alec moves to stand next to her and pulls it out of her hair, the fat petals fall apart from the stem as if they’ve bloomed too big for it to hold them anymore. The dust of pollen sticks and spreads down her hair. Alec shakes off his hand.

 

“Yeah, don’t let them do that.”

 

“I didn’t notice them do it." she let's her tone go soft, it's not Alec's fault she's edgy, "It’s not poisonous right?”

 

Alec’s eyes are like calm water, his mouth tries to grimace and grin at the same time, as if he can’t quite pretend something isn’t funny. “No, it’s not poisonous.” He’s got yellow dust on his palm and fingers, he wipes his hand on his jeans and clears his throat, walks away to hurry things along with Izzy.

 

Isabelle’s in a bad mood, whatever conversation she came to have on behalf of them all didn’t go the way she wanted, she says she’s going to bed early but her eyes are wide and awake and hungry, Clary know she means someone else's bed. Alec says he has errands to run, that he’ll be back later, but the way his face changes under the light of his cell phone backlight only tells Clary that he’s going to see Magnus.

 

Fresh air and the briskness of the night haven’t taken the heat from her face, she’s no stranger to being horny but now that it’s in a way she didn’t bring on herself it’s disquieting. She’s silent the whole way back to the institute. It's a long walk back and she feels the heat of Jace's presence against her spine the whole way home.

 

He grunts something about training.

 

She’s mentally preparing for a long night of nothing and the end of another long day is punctuated by the simple relief of being able to take off her bra and sprawl around in her underwear.

 

They debrief the other hunters, they separate without words, him to train, her to bed.  Her world seems so much smaller than it used to be.

* * *

 

She falls asleep when she’s only meant to shut her eyes to think, to focus. Her dreams are vague and unfinished but she still feels them like hands on her. She wakes up groggy, shuffles into the hall, she's hungry.

 

“Put some clothes on.” Grumbles the dark at the end of the hall.

 

“No one’s here,” she grumbles back in not nice tones, she’s barely human yet.

 

“I’m here.”

 

She wants to ask if it matters. She doesn’t, instead she tells him to shut his eyes and they toss words back and forth down the hall, it feels sibling-ish, they bicker until her toes scrunch to avoid being stepped on by his sneakers.

 

They turn in imaginary orbits.

 

She loses her words because somewhere a box falls off its shelf and when the lid comes off things fall out, things like how she kissed him before when his face was farther away and he wasn’t even looking at her, how it’d be dumb not to do it now. She startles, head pulling back. “I’ll buy myself some feet-y pajamas Captain dress code.”

 

She turns quick to make an exit as normally as possible, he’s so close her hair hits his face and she thinks of hashtags: ‘girl problems’ and ‘long hair don’t care’. There’s time to be spent with her mortification and sleeping off whatever kick of spiking fairy lust she’s on. She hears him take a step and then he’s tugging on her hand, fingers barely curling around hers in an unanchored grip.

 

His mouth is fast, his tongue is hot in her mouth, she breathes deep.

 

It’s his mouth kissing hers but it’s her footwork that steps them back so fast and far that when he’s found enough fight in himself against whatever they’ve started they’re already standing in her room.

 

She half-catches herself on the footboard, stumbles, lands hard on a knee and pops back up as his face changes into some comical expression of ‘oops’. And then he’s looking at her like he did before he was her brother. Out of the dark hall and in proper lighting everything feels too short, too low, and still too much.

 

There’s a flush across the tops of his cheeks and his mouth is open, he’s still going to leave.

 

“Kiss me again.” She says it because she wants him too, because he won't ask her.

 

He shakes his head, but he steps away from the door. He doesn’t shut it but he turns his face to really look at her instead of the wall or his feet. His eyes stick on places they shouldn’t. His lips pull in as he shakes his head, his eyes widening in distress, “Clary, no.”

 

She shrugs a shoulder, she doesn’t feel right, grogginess and whatever it was that was in the air at Meliorn’s have made her moody, “Does it really matter?” They’re words she’s only said to herself. He stays standing too far away.

 

In her haze she knows she asks the question that they’ve both been coming up with the wrong right answer for, she inhales, the room smells different, sweeter, powdery violet, sticky sweet hyacinth, “does it feel like you’re my bro…-”

 

He's faster than she is. He's right there.

 

His hands press tight on her cheeks and he yanks her up to her toes, she steps on his sneakers and fists the fabric of his shirt, holds his belt, pulls him towards her breasts, her hips. She throbs, his mouth open over hers and her tongue slipping over his. From there it’s easy.

 

He breathes against her neck, it’s one long rasp of his stubble, his exhale, his teeth, the suck of his mouth. He has one big hand pressed underneath the leg of her underwear, holding her, when she touches her fingers to his wrist he pulls his head back, his hand trying to do the same.

 

She puts it between her legs, fumbling with his sudden unwillingness to help but need to stay, she wants him to cup her in his palm but he only lets her press it to the inside of her thigh. She sighs, presses her mouth up on his throat.

 

“Come on, Clary,” he makes it seem like he wants to push her back a step but his thumb bumping up to trace the sticky heat of her slit through her underwear just makes her hips slope down.

 

His knuckle nudges up, she jerks closer when she presses her face to his collar, her hair sticks to his throat and when she steps back he follows for her mouth but she’s too far.

 

She pushes down her underwear and shakes them off her ankle. He closes the space and goes down to his knees like it’s easy and Clary sways. Again there are big hands on her, holding her by the ass, fingertips on her hips and his thumb again opening her up, pressing circles over where he's opening her up. He shoulders her thighs wide, the same way he’s told her to stand when they train, for balance, for staying steady.

 

His stele presses warm-hot in a precise pattern and curl under her navel. Isabelle has one just like it. She knows what it means, knows he’s done pretending he doesn’t want what he wants from her.

 

Isabelle retouches hers when she goes out, to visit the Fae, on missions she classifies as fun.

 

Clary wants to explain mundane birth control to him but decides the ebb and pull in her own body and blood is more pressing, she let’s her her legs give, finds herself on him, perched over his thighs, the rune is set and his stele slips across the floor.

 

The door is shut. The institute is silent, like a grave, like a church, like the ghosts and half-truths their parents pretended to be. He doesn’t help her pull off his clothes, she undresses him all the same as much as he needs to be. 

 

He’s already decided, she’s been willing since not long after they met.

 

She wonders if it matters, she told him it doesn’t but for the first time she wonders for herself. Her mother lied, her life was always a mirror image of the one she’d discovered, her father was never really dead, her father was a different man altogether. Jace never knew her mother. Jace never knew anyone, not really, not anyone other than who showed up to train him, teach him.

 

They started with different second names and now that they share the same one she still can’t find a reason to stop from putting her hands against the inside of his legs while his find her breasts under her shirt.

 

Things are hazy and indistinct, “Put it in,” she says too close to his face to make out his features, she listens to every sound, and his pushed down jeans against her hips mimic the rough scrape of stubble under her ear.

 

She babbles, he keens. He’s thick and warm inside of her and it might hurt but all she feels is satisfaction, the exhale of holding her breathe for too long, breaking the surface, there are soft damp sounds and he ruts deep and hard, he can’t help it, she wants it. She doesn’t comfort him with sad tones in his ears just forces herself closer, he shoves forward and she squirms.

 

Jace looks down at her and she doesn’t feel like his sister at all and he grins and she thinks maybe he understands, maybe he might get it. He’s found a family he never knew he had but she’s lost something, everything has been false and untrue and wrong and for the worst, she wants to go back and can’t. He’d been the only thing that was good about learning anything of the truth until it turned out he was a lie too.

 

She wonders who has had it worse, her who has lost everything, everything that had turned out for the best (her fake dad dead and her single mom and her acceptance to school and a best friend she could have fallen in love with), or Jace who gained everything he’d learned to live without (the orphan who was really a lost son, whose sister turned out to be the daughter of the guy he's been brought up to defeat in the endgame).

 

His fingers pull tight in her hair.

 

She lets her hips work, her feet pull up around him she reaches to hold her toes. He pushes his hands hard against the floor, pushing inside like he’s trying to hurt himself, hurt her. He’s saying something. It’s something she ignores as she clenches with intention and heat all over him.

 

As sorry as he says he is it doesn’t stop him from finishing half inside and half on her thighs, like it’s too wrong suddenly.

 

It doesn’t stop him from letting her climb on top, his jeans around his ankles, her breasts pushed out and his hands all over them. He’s telling her the filthy things he’s kept to himself from the very beginning, from the very first night they met and every other time. Every single before and after when he wanted to touch her, kiss her, shove himself inside of her, whether her was her brother or not. She works herself furiously over him, on him, she comes and doesn't feel bad, doesn't feel wrong, she's never been ashamed of feeling good.

 

Later he carries her to bed where she falls asleep sweat slick and murmuring about how he should stay, she wakes up sore and not surprised. She’s alone for both.

* * *

 

 

They are on opposite sides of a table covered in maps, and if she’s south then Alec stands east and Isabelle west, Jace always true north, maybe it’s the opposite, maybe she’s true north, the only real home he’s never had.

 

He won’t look at her straight on, she handed him his stele before Alec came up with a fresh red-purple mouth mark on his clavicle, no shirt in his wardrobe high enough to hide Magnus Bane’s presence, before Izzy arrived from a long night out wearing something that she didn’t go out in, someone else's shirt falling down to her dangerous thighs.

 

She wonders why Jace pretends things haven’t changed, between them, between them all.

 

Alec pretends he isn’t trying to replace Jace.

 

Isabelle pretends sleeping with the powerful means she’s powerful too.

 

Jace pretends he’s in control of himself and everything else.

 

Clary pretends she’s happy.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm too old for this shit, but here I am. Touche freeform aka abcfamily aka fox family, you win.


End file.
